The Bones of Wolfe. James Carlos Blake

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      It’s what we do, we Wolfes: we smuggle. Mostly into and out of Mexico, now and then Cuba or Central America. Been doing it for over a hundred years, ever since we settled in Brownsville, Texas, which is on the Rio Grande, about twenty-five miles upriver from the Gulf. We began by smuggling booze from Mexico into the States, then started running guns down there before the outbreak of the Revolution. During Prohibition we ran more booze than ever until repeal killed that gold-egg goose. Over the generations we’ve expanded into high-tech military gear and today we carry everything from infrared and thermal-imaging optical instruments to portable radar units to a wide range of explosive-device components. The only things we don’t smuggle are drugs and wetbacks. The drug biz is un-arguably a money river, but it attracts too many crazies. Smuggling is chancy enough without having to transact with such impulsive personalities. Besides, except for alcohol, we take a dim view of drugs. Ruinous stuff. As for dealing in wetbacks, the process entails too many stages and too many agents and too many people overall for too little reward. We like to keep every operation as uncomplicated as we can and restrict its number of participants to the fewest necessary. We do smuggle people every so often but usually carry only one or two individuals and never more than three, and what they all have in common is that they’re running from mortal danger and can afford to buy a sure escape from it. Ours is a costly service but worth every dime, considering the official documents we include in the package. The federal government can’t hide you better than we can. The fact is ID documents in general are selling better than ever, and not just to those on the run. Lots of people have something to hide that can best be hidden by way of various certifiable identities, and that’s become truer than ever in our worldwide digital age. We can supply as many identities as anybody might want, each one supported by authentic documents registered in the files of the relevant agency. A certificate of birth or baptism or naturalization, a Social Security account, a military service record—whatever paper or set of papers a client requests, we can produce it. Some of our clients have asked how we do it. Our stock answer is that we have our ways. The simple truth is that the world turns on greed, and greed slavers at an ample bribe. Our insiders at official agencies, bureaus, and record departments have long prospered by way of our incentives.

      Among the family, our extralegal pursuits are known collectively as the shade trade, and its main constituent has always been gun smuggling, guns being an article of commerce that, unlike drugs, we very much favor. Nothing else in the world so ably and indisputably accords physical equality between human beings as a gun. A 250-pound man has no advantage over a 90-pound woman if both of them are armed. As we see it, self-defense is the most elemental of all natural rights and includes the right to possess the same means to defend yourself as might be used to assault you. Absent that right, you have to rely on agents of the state for protection, but you can’t count on such an agent being at hand when you find yourself at the mercy of an armed antagonist. We choose not to depend on someone else to safeguard us or to rely on anyone’s mercy. We’re aware that many people of intelligence and good intention would disapprove of our outlook and deem it sophistic, cynical, self-serving, pick your righteous reproof. That’s okay. Sticks and stones. Other people have their ways of looking at things, we have ours.

      The family also owns a variety of legitimate and profitable enterprises—a law firm, a real estate company, a tech instruments and graphics store, a marine salvage and repair boatyard, a gun shop, plus a few others. The majority of those businesses are in Brownsville, all of them gainful and, not altogether coincidentally, most of them of advantage to the shade trade. As a matter of record, Frank and I are employed as “field agents” by Wolfe Associates, one of the most respected law firms in South Texas. So are Rayo Luna and two other of our cousins. The firm’s three partners are our uncles Harry McElroy Wolfe—Harry Mack to those who know him—and his close cousins Peck and Forrest. The position of field agent requires that we be state-licensed investigators, a hugely valuable sanction. The most routine duties in our formal job description—serving papers, conducting background checks, searching police records, and so on—are carried out by lower-level hires. What we mainly do is track down essential witnesses who deliberately or against their will have gone missing. We’re as good at finding people as we are at helping them to get lost. I love everything about the work—tracking them down, keeping them under wraps for as long as the firm requires, and all the while staying alert for whoever might be trying to get them back from us or simply wanting to prevent them from appearing in court or making a deposition. Rayo’s been on several such assignments with me and Frank. She’s got all the right instincts for the trade.

      When we’re not on a job for the Associates, we work for our cousin Charlie Fortune, the chief of shade trade operations. He’s big-muscled but limber as a fly rod, and with his close-cut dirty-blond hair, a scar through one eyebrow, and the beard he keeps at a five o’clock growth, his countenance is as daunting as his physique. His only boss is his daddy, Harry Mack. Frank and I have been Charlie’s main smugglers since graduating from college, though for the past year or so he’s been letting one of our field agent cousins, Eddie Gato, do gun runs, too. Rayo has gone with me and Frank on a СКАЧАТЬ